You didn't really want to become a handler. The whole "behind-the-scenes" thing never really appealed to you- you much preferred heading your squad with the rest of your fellow pilots and fighting on the ground, feeling the kick of a weapon in your mechanical hands, feeling so complete and so whole inside your chassis. Feeling like a steel-wrought god, marching across the battlefield and watching the little people scatter.
More important than how you felt inside the cockpit though, was your team. Your girls, your comrades, your fellow pilots. One too many times the higher ups sent you into an ambush, or left you behind enemy lines without backup, or failed to brief you properly before the sortie. A hundred little errors that could have cost you your lives. That have cost you lives. You couldn't stand any more of it, and left. You took your team out to sortie like normal... and just left. There were five of you left -- there used to be eight -- and with your mechs, whatever you all could sneak into your cockpits, and your lives, you fled. Disabling transponders and disappearing into the chaos of battle.
From there, you had to become a handler. Someone needed to take responsibility and direct your small crew. First against teams sent to recover what your old boss assumed were corpses and smoking scrap. Then it was strike teams sent to bring you back by force. Then kill squads sent to silence you. Someone needed to coordinate, and that ended up being you. Your mech sat, unused, in the meager hangar bay that you all had scraped up enough manna to afford access to, while you sat around and waited, directing your girls while they fought without you. It was for the best, but it hurt.
Eventually, they got fed up. A bigger assault was launched, more mechs, more drones, more trucks and infantry than your girls could handle. They fought as hard as they could, but it was all but certain that they'd be overwhelmed and destroyed, killed for following you and escaping. You shut off the communicator, leaping out of your seat. They noticed it -- and they didn't blame you. They figured you wouldn't want to hear them being torn apart and slaughtered, or that you were going to cut your losses and run.
You didn't give up everything for them, just to turn tail and run though. If this was going to be the end, you would face it alongside them. You had been a handler for a few years, but you still kept it. A mech sitting alone in the hangar, collecting dust. Climbing into the cockpit, your fingers dance across panels and the behemoth rumbles to life, lights flickering and powering on one after another. You skip past a dozen diagnostics and safety checks before blasting your way out of the hangar and taking off into the night sky, pushing your lethargic engines to their limits only moments after powering them on. You turn your communicator back on, and connect to your squad again.
You make it just in time, crashing through lines of RPVs and missile trucks, joining your squad at the eleventh hour. There are surprised exclamations, cheers, gleeful shouts. Tonight might be your last, but if they're going down, you're going down with them. And you're damn well sure that for those bastards, it's going to hurt.
Ai/robot x human is peak for me specifically when the robot is fully in-touch with their feelings and the human has never correctly identified an Emotion in their entire life.
I need Robot to be doodling hearts in their notebook and sighing dreamily and doing loves-me/loves-me-not. Meanwhile Human is doing the mental equivalent of standing in the war room going. Okay. So I feel both Weird and Strange around Robot. Diagnosis: allergy??????
Rating: T
Fandom: 9-1-1
Ship: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Chapter summary:
The castaways finally merge into one tribe, and the scramble for the most powerful alliance begins. Meanwhile, Buck and Eddie's alliance and relationship is on the topic of everyone's mind as they finally reunite.
read here
and here the poll to influence the next chapter!
Who wins the next immunity challenge?
Buck
Eddie
Lucy
Voting ended onJun 5, 2025
tag list (let me know if you would like to be added or removed): @haydenthewitch, @soliadiaz, @skyelunalove, @whitecanarrow, @lesbian-paladin, @084thoughts
Summary: Aaron takes care of an unwanted visitor at the readers baby shower.
MASTERLIST
A/N: this was based on this request(: I hope y'all enjoy! As always, feedback is appreciated.
Ever since Penelope had found that positive pregnancy test in your bathroom, she had all but demanded to throw you a baby shower, much to your protest. Now, seven months later, that’s how you find yourself here at the roundtable surrounded by your BAU family and your husband, celebrating the little bundle of joy that will soon make her arrival in a couple of months.
When you open the gift basket from Penelope, the tears start falling. Sitting in light pink tissue paper, was a gray stuffed bear with your baby’s name on the front of it. Beside the bear, lies a rolled up baby blanket that Pen had handmade herself along with an assortment of bottles and pacifiers. What catches your eye though, is a picture that sits just to the front of the basket in a pink picture frame; a photo of the team, taken at Rossi’s the day you found out you were pregnant. At the bottom of the frame in gray sparkly handwriting (probably Penelope's), it says, “We love you, Baby Hotchner.”
“Why are you crying, momma? Is sissy okay?,” Jack asks, tugging on your dress and crawling into your lap, softly putting his head on your stomach.
Running your fingers through his blonde locks, you move his head to face you. He’s frowning, serious even, as his brown eyes stare up at you – all but the blonde hair, he’s a spitting image of Aaron. Letting out a teary laugh, you sigh, “Oh baby, she’s okay. She’s perfect. I’m just extremely happy…” you pause, wiping the unshed tears from your eyes, and hold him tight. “I love you, this little girl, your aunts and uncles, and your daddy so much… so so much. Your little sister is loved already, and so are you.”
Jack lays his head back down and giggles, “I love you too, momma. But can I tell you a secret?” Lowering your ear down to his level, he sits up and whispers, “You’re squishing me.” Laughing, Jack wiggles out of your grasp and runs out of the room, with Uncle Dave trailing not too far behind.
–
As the shower is winding down, Derek, Spencer, and Dave start helping Aaron carry the gifts out to the SUV while the girls clean up. Jack takes his Captain America action figure and some crayons upstairs into Aaron’s office and once you make sure he’s situated and occupied, you walk back to help clean up. Taking the rest of the cake to the kitchenette, you’re abruptly pulled out of your thoughts by the overwhelming smell of Axe body spray filling your senses – it’s a smell you know well, and can only mean one thing – Brad, your ex, is for whatever reason, on the sixth floor.
Turning around, you hold onto the cake a little tighter than normal and muster up all the courage you have to talk to him. Not that you want to; the last thing you want is to see your ex at the BAU and not where he belongs — in counterterrorism, four floors down – but you know if you don’t say something, he won’t stop until you do.
He looks worse since the last time you saw him. His hair is grown out and touching his ears, slick with grease against his scalp. He looks like he hasn’t shaved in months (not that he ever took care of his facial hair when you were with him, but that’s beside the point), and the suit he’s wearing looks like it’s two sizes too big.
“What are you doing here, Brad?,” you ask, resisting the urge to roll your eyes at him.
He steps closer, and when he speaks, you can smell the stale coffee on his breath. “I heard a rumor that you were pregnant and wanted to come see how you were doing. Can’t believe you didn’t invite me to the shower. So who’s the lucky guy?”
Scoffing, you shake your head and take a few steps away from him. “I’m married now, and that’s none of your business.”
“Oh sweetheart,” he says, smirking and walking around you like a shark, “that’s never stopped me before.”
“Is there a problem?,” you hear him before you see him, and you’ve never been happier for your husband's impeccable timing.
Turning around, you give Aaron a small smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes and he takes the cake from you, setting it down, and settling his hand comfortably on your lower back. “Everything’s fine, Aaron,” you explain, crossing your arms, and sending a glare in Brad’s direction, “He was just leaving.”
Brad stares at Aaron as if he’s sizing him up, and smirks. “Aaron huh?,” he shakes his head, and laughs wryly. “You’re on a first-name basis with your Unit Chief? Hmmm.. I should have known you’d sleep your way to the top.” Aaron’s stern gaze is fixed on Brad, and when you glance back at him, he realizes he said the wrong thing.
Aaron towers over him as he takes a step closer, their noses almost touching. “Out.” His voice is low, dangerous and for the first time in your life, you hope to see a fight break out in the middle of the bullpen. The man that once prided himself in being a “real man” swallows thickly, takes a step back and, for a quick second, you see fear flash in Brad’s eyes. Aaron grabs Brad by the collar of his shirt and pulls him forward. “I said, get out. You won’t like it if I have to repeat myself… and if I see you around this bullpen or anywhere near my agents, I will see that you’re fired and arrested on federal charges. Do I make myself clear?”
Suddenly let go from Aaron’s death grip, Brad falls back and stumbles. “Crystal, Sir. I’m so-”
“Leave!,” Aaron cuts him off, voice booming throughout the entire bullpen, and you watch Brad run for the stairs. Letting out a breath, you shake your head and smirk.
Aaron brings his hand behind you, rubbing circles on your back and cupps your face with his other hand. “Sweetheart, Are you alright?” He searches your face for worry, for stress, anything he can find to give him an excuse to run down the stairs and beat the shit out of the man that thought he could talk to you like that, but finds nothing… nothing but, arousal? Your eyes are dark, hungry as you look up and grab him by the tie, bringing him into a heated kiss. With burning lungs, you let go and come up for air, still staring at him like he’s your prey.
He chuckles and wipes the corner of his mouth where your lipstick stained his face. “What was that for? Not that I’m complaining, but you never kiss me at work.”
“Because, SSA Hotchner,” you put emphasis on his title, play with the lower part of his tie, and look up at him through your eyelashes. “... you have no idea how hot you are when you’re angry.”
So I work in a comic store, normally its a great job. But sometimes, you have days where you wish you stayed in bed. Other times you see something so baffling, it makes you think you had.
Today's story is a combination of both.
This story happened around 18 months back, it was a quiet midweek day and I was finishing up my lunchbreak in the staff room upstairs. We had recently got a new stock of movie posters in and had spent the morning putting them in the rack and taking the old display ones down.
Several of the posters were of horror movies, like Friday the 13th, the Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street etc. This, apparently, was upsetting to one customer.
So as I'm heading down the stairs and out of the staff door back onto the shop floor I hear someone screaming as if it was Armageddon and someone else telling her firmly to leave and that she was not welcome back in the shop.
I round the corner and see what looks like a nice old granny screaming that we're a shop of Satanists and murderers...because we have posters of horror movie villains. She was ranting and screaming at one of my co-workers even as one of my bosses kept telling her to leave.
Luckily she seemed to get the hint and left without anything escalating beyond yelling and shouting. Still it was a strange experience for all involved.
The most important thing was no one got hurt. But its something we still bring up whenever we get stuff in related to horror.
I'm just glad she never found out about Sacrifice Sundays. That would have been harder to explain away!
